AUSTRALIAN BIBLE CHURCH

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CHAPTER ONE

EDUCATION, FALSIFICATION AND FOLLY

Introduction

In our last Volume, Possess Your Possessions, Volume 11, Ch. 9, we had a new year message, and because of developments since this was written, the first part of it is presented as the introduction to this volume, up to the point where a NEWS ITEM becomes relevant, so that this may be pursued, thus tying the old year with the New.

Accordingly, one foreground gives two different applications, the one to resolution and resolve, in Volume 11, the other here, to action and the dissolution of doubts with the introduction of finality in faith, so that you do not inferentially charge God with making your path so unclear, that you merely dismiss Him as competent deity, or invoke cursing on an implied evil ill-will, both contrary to fact, evidence and logic. He is neither the Maker of competent thinkers, while lacking thought, nor of moral marvels, whilst a moral midget, nor a surging wave of ineptitude amid a teeming marvel of intricately brilliant, conceptually penetrable DNA by the commands in which we have our very bodies.

He is neither fatuous amid such geniuses as our race boasts, nor contained by need, but free, being the basis for anything ever arising to exist, without whom there is just nothing or magic, the one with no future (and WE are future to it), the other with no basis but a bewildered belief that anything does in a storm, except that the universe so far from a storm, contains the grounds for rationality as it is investigated and its laws found, and the consequences of irrationality, writ out in our history. He has all, and gives. Rejecting the gift is the ultimate genesis in man, that of disgrace in the midst of grace, the construction of the pathway to a deserved darkness. Is it not enough to sin, that added to it is the sinuous presumption of ignoring the divine grace in Jesus Christ, and wallowing in unwisdom like a bath!

New Year 2011

GOING DOWN TO THE SEA IN SHIPS, TO STORMS, NON-NORMS

DESPERATE STRAITS AND DIVINE DEALINGS

Psalm 107:20-32

News 435

The Australian Dec. 29, 2010

There is something about going down to the sea in ships, the famous beginning of one of the encounters in Psalm 107, which is glorious in its coverage of human distress situations, and divine answers, which is refreshing, alerting. It contains a sense of adventure, and when you add, with Psalm 107:23, "those who go down to the sea in ships", this - "who do business in great waters," already the sense of the impending, with us the New Year 2011, is with us.

The sense not only of vast skyscapes, but oceanic calms, contortions, shriekings, ascents to the heights of 70 or more feet in vast billowing or even storming waters, freak waves several times above what is normally known, darknesses and stills, serene quietness of continual passage and skiing down enormous monsters who slip and slide and slither sideways and erupt unexpectedly, the awareness of the maritime dimension, in claims, its mastery and attempts to master it: it is awesome, challenging, threatening, enticing, uplifting, all at once.

Sir Francis Chichester wrote in gruesome detail about his world-famous and much followed single-handed voyage around the world, before this became so popular. He was not Sir Francis when he began, but shortly after his return. At that point, he was met by a Navy vessel which fired a formal, multiple salute, and he wondered how many single-handed navigators had received such a formal accolade. It seems that no small part of his achievement was not the many records which he broke for a small ship, for a single-handed yachting expedition, for speed for such a case, for covering set distance and so forth, but the sheer, rugged determination. Thus after making a record in his time from England to Sydney, he was challenged by many NOT to go on, not to seek to complete a round-the-world extravaganza, being told of terrible sea conditions to come on the way, or of the pounding in the rounding the Horn at the base of South America. His physical condition was far from perfect, and would become worse.

Yet despite all this, he utterly insisted. He had borne much; he would bear more. His determination would not stop at death or disablement. His craft was greatly improved while he waited a few days in Sydney, by famous builders, and with his dream, his resolution, his insistence, he set off. Once his mast went under to an enormous degree, in a vast roiling mass of waters, but it did not break. Bone chips came to lodge from a large impact, near his elbow, and oozings from it made testimony to his condition; yet through horrendous seas, he managed, to arrive to a hero's welcome in England. He had done what drew him, conquered what nearly killed him, had abashed him but did not deter him, and in the most uneven contest, he was victor. England saluted him, and his name rocketed at that time, to great fame.

THE CONDITIONS

What then ? Resolution, determination, the militancy of a vision, the ready bearing with breaches of almost all expected norms, opportunity to disengage, met with iron insistence: these things in the midst of the awesomely great ocean experiences, the ocean itself a vast array of sometimes enticing, sometimes devastating powers, drew admiration. It is not to be regarded as oddball, eccentric, faddish; but grand...

In the Christian life, it is much the same in SCOPE. That is, you have the awesome power of God, rather than mere oceans, His majesty, His conditions, His will, direction, work for your life, challenges to your complacency, persistence in ventures and adventures for you, not for your excitement or your self-fulfilment, but for His kingdom. It is so much more challenging than was the sea to Sir Francis. HIS desire is ALSO in some ways an unknown. He may reveal more of it as you go. It is not EVEN your own design, known, neat and tucked away in your heart. Instead, glorious, grand and awesome, the Lord Himself is settled in the place of power in your heart, for as a Christian (and it is this which we discuss), that is where you are found, occupied by your Maker, subject to your Lord (Luke 6:46).

It has this comfort, that He KNOWS you and the world and the enemies and the conditions, and will not test you beyond what you are able to bear (I Cor. 10:13). But it is far more than oceans that you will have to bear. It is smouldering hatreds, vicious counter-enterprises skilfully wrought, traitors who wave the Christian flag but are as little subject to the direction of the Saviour as is any yachtsman who is merely fulfilling his own dream. You must also meet divine discipline when you err, and being willing, ask the Lord to "try me and see if there be any wicked way within me" - Psalm 107:21. Indeed, the divine investigation goes deeper, for he says, "Search me and try me and know my heart ..." before coming to the liability for any wickedness, and actively seeking its detection and expulsion. Then it is no longer there for human impulsion, and tragedy may be avoided.

The old round of phrase, when someone is asked a deeper question, was this: "Search me! I don't know ..."

Here the searching is not just by circumstances, when often the Christian is odd-balled as one who knows God when it is the social norm, even if you must be religious, NOT to know, just to be traditional or excited or whatever else appeals, and to keep it to yourself, and if it be touched on (as it were, accidentally) to have a becoming sense of modesty, saying, "Of course, this is just the way I feel, I fully recognise that many ... " etc., etc..

THAT is nothing to do with being a Christian, being a disjunction from the divine, a human moth circling around a light, not wanting to tell how the flame attracts, but joined with others who find the same flame nice, and so making a church in this case. This IS being ashamed of Christ, and that is excluded from the kingdom of heaven, as from the lips of Christ in Luke 9:26. Ashamed of Him ? then He will be ashamed of you, before His Father in heaven and the angels.

Is a man who wants to circle the globe in a small yacht to have iron resolution, and those who know God to lack it ? Is he willing to risk his life perhaps scores of times, in enthralling and horrendous circumstances, because of a dream, a desire, a governing grit and vision, and those who know God to find it inconvenient to do more! More ? Yes, for these oceans are not so charted, nor are all the rocks known; and many of them are vast, and suddenly impose themselves, while treachery is not just of waves that deceive because one is too ignorant and the topic too vast for total comprehension, but of people who, hypocrites (self-confessed or merely confused), betray you in the midst of storms, speak evil of you, set you at nought, try to derail you as you approach the waters.

How inventive is the human heart, and you may meet hundreds who are worse than any gales! Moreover, you are not permitted to answer hate with hate, cursing with cursing, but required to love your enemies. This of course does not mean, to take the yachting analogy, that you try to give the wave every opportunity to dismast you; but that you have the good of those misled, in heart even while you resist them and if necessary expose them, seeking construction of good in them, rather than mere constriction merely of evil.

THE CALL

How then would anyone ever come to such a plight! How could any sane person SEEK and voluntarily opt for a life in which, "I am crucified with Christ" (Galatians 2:20) becomes one of the enticements! Who wants crucifixion ? What is this, a droll delusion ?

Not at all. As the tinsel and the glamour depart, we have found war upon war, evil within evil, schemings and deviousness of man and his governments becoming yet more apparent in the last 100 years, with millions dying aghast and obliterated, lying over the years in trenches, or put in cages, or made to die slowly building railways, or drugged and assaulted in mind, or taken like cattle by a particularly devilish drover, to the abattoirs, even by the millions, while others seek to exterminate any stragglers, as in the Jewish case, killing what they can of the survivors who were given a safe place called Palestine, which is now being seductively taken, bit by bit from their industrious and nation-making hands, and bombarded, while nations bombard it in the meantime with words of reviling as well. Such is too typical of the undying fires of reckless wickedness which fills nation after nation, seeking independence, as in South Africa, now openly inviting Communist agitators, and siding with North Korea in its atomic threats, and nation-starving rhetoric.

Such is the state of man that it is manifest that either he finds God or God finds him out. Times of 'advance forever' enthusiasm look sicker than Africa, more ludicrous than the boasting of North Korea, the tirades of Iran, the multiply devious forces at work within Afghanistan and Pakistan, the latter well equipped with power to devastate millions, some at once, some in a slower and more prolonged process, should any religious imperialism so move it.

Meanwhile, masses are inveterately set on not finding God, resolute in determination, seeking to destroy liberty, as in the Australian net-filtering fiasco, which may yet become law, denying freedom of speech in the ludicrous extravaganzas of protecting the young, as if you have to kill a sheep when it has foot-rot, rather than attend to the exact spot in question with skill; or insisting on arrangements which make it a crime to upset anyone, though it has not yet reached the point of having doctors put in prison for telling the truth to a sensitive patient, who prefers to die slowly in anguish, to even knowing what is the matter. Those who understand all but nothing of the forces at work, want to hush those who refer to the Maker, His demonstrably true word (cf. SMR, TMR), as they have done from the earlier days of the Roman Empire to the present, whether through Islamic invasion of Europe, which nearly succeeded in the 8th century AD, or through Romanist Inquisition, which may have accounted for millions, leaving masses orphans, and more millions within the grasp of those who dispossessed the former owners both of life and of property, ghoulish in horror.

Forces both religious and irreligious storm, and confused parties imagine that some medley called 'Christianity' has been responsible for the Inquisition, when in fact it was the biblically Christian body, who would add nothing to the word of God as defined by the Church, who were major victims of that assault. Force is forbidden for the pursuit of Christ^*1, in John 18:36 and Matthew 26:52-56: so that this has been, is and will be thrust on the Christians. They are as lambs to the slaughter; and this is part of being crucified with Christ. You have to get on with the business of sailing not around the world, but into deep waters, fearless and faithful, so that some at least may be saved from the torments of untruth and the destiny of damnation (John 3:36).

You may be hanged, poisoned, slandered, slaughtered, libelled, impaled, segregated, your house or church burnt as in India, simply slain as in some Islamic countries. People may try to take over your country and remove freedom so that you may be quietened, and some may co-operate with them in the hope that this is what will occur. Children may be torn from you, as in the Sudan, and myths made about you; but you bear and forbear and proceed in Christ with the offer of peace in the heart, which is the path to peace elsewhere, and the result of the presence of Him who having made us, knows how to remove the madness that currently embroils the nations.

The call is not to circle the globe, but to rescue many from its waves, before they drown in unbelief, anaesthetised by cultural propaganda, some indeed, even all but deifying their own ways - calling them 'culture' and then 'sacred' as if to make of themselves or of others, VIRTUAL GODS.

In this non-maritime challenge, where the oceanic powers are of a social turbulence and political menace, where the Father of spirits is confronting continually the 'prince of this world' (John 14:30), who has "NOTHING IN ME" Christ indicated, there are various mounting passions that make oceanic storms but a prelude, a symbol, but far from a myth. There are real; and so are the spiritual storms, far from surreal, for on the altar of their country, as some patriots once left their lives, to deliver from servitude, where on can neither speak freely nor act with godly liberty, so now there is a compulsory offering. It is not made by the young who have desire to deliver, but by those older who have desire to curtail freedom in imaginary servitude to self-serving survival, making things agreeable for the good of a godless theorem, a futile sacrifice for a forlorn purpose, to replace God with invented powers, mythical magnitudes, leaving all logic in recess and even empirical reality confined to barracks in the interests of what is imagined MIGHT be found, though it never is.

News today in this regard, added to the tumultuous waters of past evils in this field is a word on the proposed new Australian curriculum, the PM statedly having no religion, and the curriculum being of a fastidiously subversive kind. Whether the two are related is not to the point; what is, is this: that this country of Australia has moved so far from sacrifice for freedom, that now we have compulsory sacrifice for servitude. It is only proposed ? alas far worse, if it be possible, has already been done.

HISTORY, SCIENCE, CURRICULUM AND COUNTRY

Thus, it is noteworthy that in The Australian of Dec. 29, 2010, an article appeared with the title, Christianity has a Role in Learning. It rightly showed abhorrence of the quietus tactic, that is the simple omission of almost all reference to religion in general, and Christianity in particular, from the "draft national curriculum."

What does it say ? Among much, this:

"The compilers of the draft have chosen the simplest strategy of all: deliberate, pointed, tendentious and outrageous silence. In its 20 pages, the draft ancient history curriculum mentions religion twice. There is reference to Christianity anywhere in the document." In the draft modern history, we read, Christianity is never mentioned explicitly."

Referring to "oikophobia" , the fear of one's own home, he applies this to such a repudiation of inheritance and home, that is the NATIONAL heritage, as this curriculum appears to represent. Odious, he continues, is "the name of Christianity" to "those oikophobes for whom the hope of a multinational and God-free world stands in the place of the dream of a promised land."

In this way, he focusses the religious intensity of the pseudo-faith of those who act to crush out Christ, the Bible and objective morality (cf. News 19) from the national affairs.

Christianity in the eyes of some such, he asserts, has brought more misery than happiness. Of course that depends on what you mean by 'happiness.' Joy IN the Christian is innate (John 16). But if the reference is, as appears, to non-Christians, then he lists various religiously related wars, errors of some clergy towards children, (Rome's) eradication of the Albigensians, an indifference to slavery, the mistreatment of the Jews and so on. The 13th century attack by an inflated and unbiblical Romanism, hoisting up its pope to excluded heights (Matthew 23:8-10 cf. SMR pp. 1032-1088H), and using a flat contradiction of the Bible in order to make a military and militant persecution of this body, as of the Waldensians, is nothing whatever to do with the Christian faith: unless an assault!

It is precisely similar, in the sense of a pretended relationship, to the work of medical forces which without other established ground, ignore the Medical Association and its requirements, while wishing place from its name. It has a name; but it does not dispense it to what is unyielding to its conditions, nor does its authority become a transferable item to what is outside its scope. This applies utterly and quite simply when the authority in view is that of the word of God, one over all other words, to include no more that it designates from God, and to exclude what it excludes (Proverbs 30:6). Therefore, if you want to have some other christ (II Corinthians 11), or one with some other perspective (Matthew 5:17-20, John 14:26), some other approach and some other height for clerics than He allows, or source for additives or annulments, then it is a free world, but a false word if you make a multi-source substitute. Indeed, Paul calls such action that of 'false apostles'.

Thus, what is not so free is this: to slander or libel His people by characterising what is done by THOSE WHO PERSECUTE THEM (as in case of the Romanist Inquisition - Ancient Words ... Ch. 14) as if it were what they did. Are the victims to be answerable, indeed characterisable, by the deeds of their assailants! It is one thing to be crucified; it is quite another to be blamed for it as if you were a persecutor!

That is not only to call evil good (cf. Isaiah 5), in biblical terms, but to invest what is good with what is evil as well. Are you to be condemned for being hanged ? as if you had done it ... Are you to be acknowledged for breaching the peace, if it be your own body which is breached by assault as in the Inquisition, yes in the wars against this and that, which unbiblical Romanism has wrought, and even incited (cf. SMR pp. 968, at *9, and these sites)! Of course others have joined Romanists in militant religiosity, by which fangs of disfaith are buried in the flesh of those who disagree. Many Communist and Islamic terrorists, both in charge of a nation and a discharge from it, have done much the same; but the present point is simple. It is this: do not bundle up persecutor and persecutee in making a history of the religion of Jesus Christ, as inscribed in the Bible and witnessed in the world, called Christianity. What aborts His command is simply not relevant to His religion, just as what is drunken is not relevant to teetotalism! How COULD it be ?

Such things, deviant in doctrine, defiling in assault, have no relationship to the question of the good or otherwise that has come from Christianity. You COULD argue deviously that although this was indeed not biblical Christianity, and is in flagrant contrast both to what the Bible permits in Church authority and papal self-elevation, yet if it had not been for Christianity, this perverse mockery of it would never have come to be. That however would resemble saying that if laws of honesty had never been proclaimed, criminals could never have been legally defined as such. Standards, in a free world, are routinely broken, noted, applied, twisted, restored; but this has nothing to do with their being evil, only with the heart of mankind, which alas is in its natural state, now 'evil' as Christ indicated (Luke 11:13). That is, man as in Ephesians 4:17-19, and 2:1-12, is out of due relationship with God (Romans 5:1-12, 1:17ff.), and tends to show it in power and twistiness. As to confessors to whom sins are relayed, not accredited from the word of God, God alone knowing the heart of man (Jeremiah 17), if these become sullied with the sins they audit, then what of that ? It is another extraneous error.

The Christian Church, to be sure, is made of sinners, but redeemed ones; and their whole character being changed, the nature of their works and heart is radically different; but it is not perfect as you see in such lapses as reflected in Psalm 51, though it is purified, disciplined and dynamised anew. Cleansing is like salt, and makes a difference, liberating the soul to direct dealings with deity, who having made us free, knows how to delete the delirium which sin brings so readily to the spirit of man, and cancelling guilt, bring life everlasting, focussed in the knowledge of God as Father, Christ as Saviour and the Holy Spirit as enabling. It is no nominal change, or passing mutation, though many who dabble in this as in other things, may become testimonies to equivocation (cf. Hebrews 6 and 10).

Thus the idea of the terrible mis-contributions of Christianity is here confused with the terrible imitations of biblical Christianity which the world loves to group together, despite the fact that the one has in fact persecuted the other inordinately over centuries and with that form of ruthlessness which religiosity often assumes when it breaks the divine bounds, as in Revelation 12, where it is seen at its ultimate source. While Islam in the Koran has taken much from materials associated in this way or that with Judaism and Christianity, both of which long preceded it, indeed has mutated and marred them, and rejected the salvation of Christ, God as man, while giving Him as denatured, some spurious place, re-invented and remade, Communism has made something of a caricature^*2of Christianity. This it has done by making categories of things and redefining them, as it carried out its perverse mischiefs of making man nothing and then acting as if he were everything, a transformation lacking in nothing more than logic.

The Australian article then lists many of the extraordinarily good things Christians have contributed to history.

These considerations, noted above, therefore merely reinforce the main thrust of that article.

Many, he proceeds, "are determined to continue to wage that kind of war of attrition in the hope that we shall simply and finally melt away." He feels that those who framed the national curriculum, or many of them, have such a hope. After all, if you are trying to teach history, either you are selectively and with slant, seeking a way to institute some value system or other, some perspective, some hope for the future, some direction for humanity's feet, and have no intention of helping people to see what has happened; or you are, on the contrary, seeking to educate them. Education used to be a feature and focus of Education Departments, before ideological slants became militantly manipulative, and shamelessly deletive of subject matter for scholarly sobriety and rational thought. Students thus become manipulees, as much as in the case of other religions, than this obsessive humanism, relativism, forgetful of the fact than even with Einstein, the grand relationships of things which he envisaged were taken as having a species of divine absoluteness (cf. SMR pp. 299ff.).

In this way, whereas those to be educated had been in much, ignorant of the powers, principles, procedures, passions, dreams, work towards them, confusions, eruptions, peaceable moments of the past, and what related politically, religiously, ethically, militarily, logically, economically, developmentally to these things, and came to learn so that they might assess and be instructed, now this changes. There has arrived en scène in the field of distorting Australian education of the young, another way. While no education but that of God Himself is perfect, there are developments in distancing!

Thus, in the past the trend in this land was at least in principle, to be instructive, rather than initially doctrinaire in approach. If things were decisive in a given direction, it was at least intended to be based on exposure to reason, and hence to reality, all of it. Now it appears more and more based on choice, silence and simple indoctrination. The choice ? Not that of the student but of the curriculum moulders, who have the intimidatory power to dictate, even to private colleges, the content with the slant, and the exclusions with the inclusions in ways so horrendous, that in this way it is even worse than the savage insistence of Hitler and Stalin in 'education', for their folly was blatant, while this is merely insidiously directive.

Of course, in general terms, you might properly seize on overall trends, and point out philosophic approaches which best match for them to savour, and give grounds for this; but you WOULD NOT leave people ignorant, whether in ancient or modern history, of one of the main features of the thrust and motivation of the past: for example the place of religion, in the case of this land, the Christianity of the nation founding it, in its past. If time is there to teach, to omit that would appear in itself be a prostitution of the authority given to you.

Of course, if a country authorised people to treat history as a tool of its own preference, then that would explain it, remove at least the legal criminality though not the moral iniquity of such action, and give a democracy, which had voted for such a government to do such things, a chance to show its talons. If however it had not been elected specifically to do such a thing for the direction of the minds of its students, as would appear to be the case now, then instead of the whole country becoming a speck of glowing ember, gradually turning to nothing in this field, it would be a flamboyant rebellion against truth, justice and logic. It could the join the totalitarian regimes, if not in the WAY the government is elected, then in the WAY it behaves when it is. It would be more open, however.

For decades now, in South Australia in particular, a similar vulgarity has been in power, in which in the field of creation, there has been a sort of trade-union among some scientists and their political colleagues, in which the wishes of some, indeed most, are taken to become a mandate for just such a truncated and tendentious approach in this theme and category of thought, attestation and evidence.

In a mystic dictatorship built on nothing, natural things must not be related to supernatural ones: such is the Lilliputian delusion of grandeur, which seems to seize many of the didactic missionaries in the organic evolutionary camp, exporting their ideas and seeking to have them imprinted without competition, in the minds of the young, thus selectively invaded. In this way, instead of a field of enquiry of what best meets duly listed and checked fact, science becomes a philosophic pulpit, as much against what is contrary, however reasonably it may be urged, to its philosophic ideas, as any Communist nation ever was. Some even make materialism a sine qua non, the beginning of scientific thought, whereas by its authoritarian posturing, it is its end!

Make materialism a necessity, some chant, while others merely apply this unprincipled principle (cf. Repent or Perish Ch.7 , Christ Incomparable ... Ch. 2, News 97), this irrational reductionism, in practice as a relatively easy man-moulding dictatorship of ideas.

This, it is as if believing in fairies were the essence of science, and seeking multiply attested bases for action were heresy. NEVER did Romanism, for all its deserved reputation in the Inquisition, exceed the degree of dogmatic and almost hysterical denunciation which many in the realm of the magical by acclamation, otherwise called materialism, the deletion of logical causation, now didactically exhibit.

Perhaps worse, since there are not too many imprisonments in the West for this, as yet, youth is seized like a paper doll, and painted with Party colours with an impudent face by Education authorities (cf. TMR Ch. 8). Some attack (cf. Beauty for Ashes Ch. 3), those who refuse the tribal coloration of their children, while boasting of the New Establishment of what is Irrationality and Unverifiability, the criterion of the New Science (cf. SMR pp. 140ff., Secular Myths and Sacred Truth). It is not this which put a rocket ship on the moon, but the opposite: namely, rationality about things that happen, are demonstrable, indicatable, reasonable, formulable as laws, examinable in cause, within the compass of the ascertainable. It was this rather than pseudo-religious and unrealistic rants.

What is the actual and current actual outcome of this in the field of so-called education,
for example in South Australia ?

Creation (like religion in the history side, it seems) is scarcely to be mentioned. It is far worse, here, however, than in that historical case. Even in science, the CHILDREN are not to be engaged in it. It is verboten. Systematic teaching of the history of conflicting, clangorous and clashing theories is not on; the place of creation is excluded, even in other fields, from rational outcome. This is war, a sort of scientistic trade unionism given full reign without moderation, by the government.

It is desolatory of fact, exclusive in scope, delusive amid mutually destructive organic evolutionary theories and clashes, being tendentious, non-illustrated, a matter of mysteries and ideas, never verified, hence meta-empirical in its exposures, a bastion for ignorance and a blast in the face of wisdom. Scientific method is not carefully applied with student attention wisely directed to its place; political and quasi-religious method is applied in an appalling invasion of the Class-room, but especially in its most remote prey, Science! (cf. Scientific Method ...).

In fact, when this author was lecturing in what is now a University in SA, and did precisely what is the remedy for this, providing missing scope in the field, in a systematic manner in terms of scientific method and its application, he was told to STOP! because it was 'not convenient'. CHALLENGE to show any particle that was taught to be false or wrong, was met only with this concept of inconvenience. It was not convenient to do this; but of any error of content of what was taught, one was not at all convicted. It simply did not arise, even under challenge! What then was the ultimatum ? One must STOP or GO. It is never my design to lease out my tongue for manifest untruth and injustice, so I had to go.

But what preceded my going ? It was a categorical CHALLENGE that organic evolutionary material was much touted and vaunted in that academic institution, and that truth demanded such systematic elements as were by me at that time being given, as so often in other places by so many others, thus here uncovering things omitted and providing liberty for assessment. It should therefore, this presentation of mine, continue. This challenge was unmet. Indeed it was dismissed categorically. It was not CONVENIENT. The place of truth, one indicated, supposedly hallowed in universities was thus affronted. It was anomaly, departure, impoverishment, culpable narrowing.

Nothing changed. Just as the challenge was not rationally met, so the fearful acknowledgement of what was constraining the case, convenience, was the answer of administration. Indeed, the challenge met no rebuttal or even rational treatment at all. This merely typifies the situation. The folly of it is given in detail in The gods of naturalism have no go! as in such works as Secular Myth and Sacred Truth, TMR Chs. 1 and 8,and Beauty for Ashes Ch. 3.

In other words, what is being attempted in the removal of certain content from the academic field of history has long been done far more offensively to truth and learning, wisdom and scientific method, in other fields, such as science itself, wherever the supernatural and the natural are found in one area of discourse and investigation. Nor is it by any means in this land alone; it is a fervent ferment of anti-visionary delusion, as rich in contempt as Nazism was for the weak world, as delusive as its wild idea of racial superiority as a phase of survival value and hideously imagined progress. It is just as delusive, as unwarranted, as authoritarian, as unwise, as abusive of youth by indoctrination and limitation of field to the unempirically irrational. It resembled moreover that of Communism in its derision of the reality of law and truth, justice and morality, while is surreptitiously set up on no basis, its own morals which condemned those who had other morals. As were they, so is this, empty of fact, rich in dreams, intolerant of debate, insistent on monolithic philosophic portals at the entry of every school.

As a hideous caricature of education, it uses the term 'scientific,' as if the philosophic ideas of some scientists deleted the method for which science is famous^*2A. In this way, if it were possible, even the elect might be deceived; but since it is not possible, it is better from them to be active in seeking to rescue those drawn to death, as is the case in this site by the grace of God (cf. Proverbs 24:11).

It is indeed true that such evils - such expropriation of student liberty and dogmatic thrusts on empty myths, always offering, never giving their evidential support in visible terms, whereas creation has much basically testable and NOTHING ever contrary to evidence (cf. SMR pp. 140 ff.) - is part of the evil which afflicts this world. It is a section of the anti-God thrust which is to be its doom in the end, though not till much more has happened (Matthew 24:21-22).

More rancorous and outrageous development is to come, and as with the creation, it will be done so categorically, as that was, as the masterful monolith of deception raises its seductive head (cf. II Thessalonians 2). God, on the other hand, telling us all to test all things (I Thessalonians 5:21. Isaiah 41, 43, 48), and giving much time to history to exhibit the results! will in His time, act judgmentally (II Thessalonians 1). This will be done to vindicate the truth against the power-manipulative deceptions of the present, in their tormented world of make-believe: master-concepts without God and odious maladies of heart, mind and spirit, amid writhing bodies and broken minds, its increasing testimony. After all, in creation, where sin abounds, so does wearing out, death being one station on the way (cf. I Corinthians 15, Isaiah 51:6). When deliberate sin augments the process, the products of folly soar.

To bring on this situation was easy, as when a drunk probationary driver twists the frame of a friend about a lamp-post, through needless collision with the car: such things do not require a lot, except in the area of omission! However, though fall and failure was easy to achieve, to remove its clamant and clamorous results, this is a profoundly difficult call: but God did it (II Corinthians 5:17ff.), and Christianity shows how and with what results and with what evidence (cf. SMR, TMR, Deity and Design..., Light Dwells with the Lord's Christ ...).

As even our genomes are wearing down (cf. Witness for Wonder Appendix ), rather than ramping up - just one more of the ludicrous misnomers of the always upwards myth, an empty engine that does not go or show - man in his flirtation with divine power and removal of the divine name, is becoming so ludicrous that his international military tensions are merely one segment of the crushable caterpillar of his presumption. Even that was predicted (Luke 21), as much more (cf. SMR Chs. 8-9). What is predicted on a given basis should be assessed and in the works noted just above, is so assessed; and it should be compared with every other effort to produce understanding of the human plight. There is nothing else that even comes near, logically.

The beginning, the stages, the kinds, the state of things, the deteriorations, the loss of many kinds over time which Stephen Gould of Harvard attests so dramatically (cf. Wake Up World! ... Ch. 6), the nature of history as man plays with power ideas without power realities, the confusion and the militancy, in militias and in universities: it is all accounted for with an elegance which in the micro-field, is found in E=MC^2,itself just one of the micro-laws by which things are managed, and directed, as Einstein saw it, himself abhorring laws for no cause, and unsettled in his mind concerning the ultimate depths (cf. SMR pp. 299ff.).

Thus, not merely because it is a good tactic, should such evils as these in the science and history curriculum be resolutely confronted, not to mention in the TV and radio connivance; but for the sake of truth itself, they must be. The fate of man is not only discernible in military battle fields, but in those of the soul, the heart, the education and the development of each person. Love does not shrug. It acts. It does not use force as a clamp on others; it uses freedom as an opportunity in the love which does not shrug and shrug again, as the tragedies before its eyes mount as if new mountain chains were appearing on the earth: but these, they are not physical, though their results are so. Genomes themselves may wear out (as Professor Sanford of Cornell attests - Waiting for Wonder Appendix), amid the voluntary human march backwards, which is evidential, philosophical and increasingly political in international thrust.

However, the God who made matter, time and processes of design, does not march backwards. It is the very nature of design in a testing environment in this type of world, to wear out, and the Second Law of Thermodynamics sums it. It is the nature of God not to do so, being the source of limits and laws, subject to none, author of all. Even time is His invention, for it FORCES waiting and limits action: but for God, nothing limits Him who delimits all. He does not even change. The variability of man as his nature fails, falls and files divorce proceedings more and more openly from its Maker, is thus the more contrasted, sad, poignant and pointed alike.

Time is a mere play-pen, you might say, in terms of a comparison with man as he grows up: but with God, there has never been need to grow, since if there were, HE would be part of a process, and not unlimited, nor would He be the Eternal without whom nothing could be temporal, the necessary always present One, never able to arrive from a nothing base, for it is totally unproductive. Always there, always adequate, constantly confirming the chosen course for creation, He is the logical necessity, without whom liberty would be meaningless, even to afflict others as is now the free choice of many a government.

Without Him, all then of the universe having neither base or basis, logical account for its delimitations or site of embarkation from nothing would fail. It would be a matter of fabricated faith in what is definably inadequate. In the field of eternal adequacy or inadequacy for all, ONLY God fits, and fills and overflows necessity: His powers are as is His place (SMR), and His power is as attested in orderly, investigable, conceptually stated results, heightened by liberty, which uses the order, to invent, imagine and manipulate ideas, whether rationally or irrationally, as in the organic evolutionary and materialistic case. Moreover, it is this liberty which elects to investigate reality with reason and to find reflective in the universe, the configurations, laws, susceptibilities to rationalities such are found in its own self, so that reason meets its counterpart in creation, all the product of LOGOS.

In contrast to all the denunciatory kefuffle and irrational preoccupation is He; and from His realm, eternal life^*3is within His gift. He is by the Gospel of Jesus Christ, so long pre-attested, so long exhibited changeless to this world, leading man to His own realm; for man, having begun in time, is reachable by the Inventor of our time. In this, the testing of life brings hope for its culmination and fulfilment, beyond its wearing process and diminuendo loss of design data over time, as scientifically attested. As liberty enables the one, so it requires the other.

It is eternal life or eternal shame, shut eyes or open, intractability and intransience. The latter is within man's attainments for ignoring the most obvious thing of all, that nothing has no future, and what HAS to be there before all processive time, is, was and works. Indeed, extending time to accommodate irrational myths merely wastes time. Outside delimited process is the necessary cause of its institution, and outside time with its delimiting demands of patience is eternity, also necessarily; and that all-sufficient God whose it is, and who is disposed to share it with man, VIA the method given, does not alter because man alters his own mind. It is not DNA this time (to create man), but Deity via Sacrifice in Christ (to redeem man, II Corinthians 5:17ff., Galatians 1-3, Romans 3:23ff.). That is what is faced, and to be faced.

As to the God of eternity, He has always to be there for anything to be there, and it must always be adequate, for from inadequacy, by definition you cannot gain the results in view: all of us and the stuff made around us. He is not informed by the time He made, but having formed it, has it in survey as we a book where the last page is already known (Isaiah 46:10, 44:24ff.). Long has He delighted in telling man what calamity, blessing, offer, opportunity, alternative is there to follow, what deliverance is available and what is the content of rebellion. Christ however indicated that closing the eyes is indeed a definitive shut-out, but one which merely removes the remedy for rebellion and the viewing of the appointed method of restoration (cf. Matthew 13:15ff.).

God having no need for fulfilment, as if a creature of some Creator, there being a beginning as source, does not withhold from man the exit path from sin, from confrontation and to restoration to the delights of the design in which man was made. He has foretold it from the first, kept it to the last, enacted it in the midst (Galatians 4:4, 6:14), confirmed it in fulfilments unending, and in experimental power in the Gospel application to the hearts of man, throughout (cf. SMR Ch.6 ).

Worship, then, nothing and all its attainments; ignore reason and all its requirements; be banal and unblessed if you must, but know that for all these things God will surely bring you to account when you cross the line at voyage' end (Ecclesiastes 11-12).

Moreover, if you PREFER to live in darkness,

	without the light of logic, of the Lord, of life, of truth^*⁴, of what stands before all inquisition by man, however bloody, and before all else by constraint of reason and experiment alike, the basis for all things ontological and aetiological:
	then what would you find in heaven
	but an eternal challenge to find reality, glaring at you who do not desire it!

Is darkness then somewhere to hide ? but there is no hiding from God.

NOTES

See on the nature of force in the field of religion:

SMR pp. 50ff., 62ff., Licence for Liberty Ch. 9, SMR Ch. 10, News 98.

See for instance:

Question and Answer Ch. 1 - why wanted;
12 ,

News 19;

Biblical Blessings Ch. 13;

Barbs ... 14, 19

*2A

From Lord of Longsuffering ... Ch. 2, *2, we have these data, which bear some relationship to the point.

Professor Lewontin of Harvard University in biological science, makes the matter clear, and this is not the first such admission from scientists, what is the philosophic point.

Lewontin, notable figure in the aggressive evolutionary program wrote this: ("Billions and Billions of Demons," The New York Review, p. 31, January 9, 1997 - emphasis in original)):

Our willingness to accept scientific claims against common sense is the key to an understanding of the real struggle between science and the supernatural. We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to naturalism. It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door. The eminent Kant scholar Lewis Beck used to say that anyone who could believe in God could believe in anything. To appeal to an omnipotent deity is to allow that at any moment the regularities of nature may be ruptured, that miracles may happen.

Here we see many non-scientific philosophical assumptions, some impossible logically, set not as an admission of a zealot, acknowledging the fault of putting personal ideas into a container unit, into which science is to be sovereignly suppressed, a sort of papal pronunciamento on doctrine, with a new kind of authority without ground, but as a glorying, in true religious zeal.

He freely admits how ludicrous is much in materialistically captured science, as shown in recent volumes as in SMR and Repent or Perish Ch. 7 and Christ Incomparable ... Ch. 2, where such basic concepts are shown to be logically incoherent. It has to appear so, the point he admits, because it is so, and this truncated insistence, based on nothing, a mere preference, MUST produce such ludicrous results, such just-so stories, since it abandons just use of logic and causality, and what this requires. These admittedly appalling looking results come as simple verification that such cut-down science is incompetent. that it does produce such results, when what is removed from the actual evidence, in terms of what has been called THE CULT OF THE FORBIDDEN (cf. SMR pp. 150ff., 330ff.), not only ruins scientific credibility in these forbidden cultish procedures, but cuts away truth, and leaves a desolated result, much like Hiroshima.

Commitment in science, if it is to retain any respectability, is not, as with the Romanist body, to a preferred philosophy, which gave it ludicrous results. Rather, it is to the whole realm of investigation, the entire empirical read-out; and results should be the basis of hypothesis, not the appalling residue when ludicrous hypotheses are insisted on. AT ONCE, when verification fails, and the theory is contradicted, in science, that ends it. It is not necessary to live a whole life of contradiction, while bravely asserting that you will fight them on the beaches of materialism. What is irrational is SURE to be defeated, at length, by reason, and this is the case here.

It is good that the good Lord has given us CAPACITY to look at ALL evidence, including reason within and as found in 'nature', and if possible, better yet to insist that the results are harmonious, logically coherent and impressive when we act without prejudice, carefully testing things out (cf. *4 below). It is the Lord who in I Thessalonians 5, tells us to TEST ALL THINGS. THAT, it is true to scientific method; just as revelation is true to God, and the results of the two present no disagreement, but to prejudice which imports what is not science, into it, as if unable to contain the clear honest honour of TESTING EVERYTHING! It is because God is back of it all, that this is a pleasant task!

See The Meaning of Liberty and the Message of Remedy, Ch. 9 for example. This, as exposed by de Koster, is In accord with Marx's normal mode of making materialistic images of spiritual things. Adapting from Hegelian ideation, in the history of ideas and their alleged movement, he moved to forces of mere kinesis, physical stuff, substituting mysterious urges and surges by some unevidenced law, amid chance by some forgetfulness. Thus he substitutes mere force, somehow elevated to understanding, for works of imagination, ideation and comprehension, such as is the nature of his own work USES. In this way, what he denies, he uses, what he despises, he deploys and what he excludes - in a world in which he ultimately envisages it is all a matter of matter moving - he claims access to a truth which therefore is not there. So did his model mar man and murder millions. So do dictators delude the simple, and so does confusion conduct multitudes to hideous death, following the death in the heart, of the vision of truth in one man, one movement. There are others like it! The shores of history are littered with sure things founded on fabrication and fiction; but their gruesome results are no fiction.

See also the Volume on this topic.

E. Calamity in Psychology

Chapter 132 SMR Ch. 4, Section I; Spiritual Refreshings ... Ch. 9, incl. End-note 1
(esp. programmatic psychology and its ilk),

Chapter 133 Marvels of Predestination and the Ways of Will 7, *1

F. Physics and Metaphysics

Chapter 134 Calibrating Myths ... Ch. 1, TMR Ch. 1,esp. pp. 8ff., 17ff.,
A Spiritual Potpourri Ch.4, Nos. 9, 10, 12, SMR pp. 396ff.

Chapter 135    Delusive Drift or Divine Dynamic Ch.     7,
                          Ancient Words, Modern Deeds Ch. 9, Causes 1
                          The Wit and Wisdom of the Word of God Ch.   4

Chapter 136 Stepping Out for Christ Ch. 2, Wake Up World ... Chs. 2, 3
The gods of naturalism have no go! 25

Chapter 137 A Spiritual Potpourri Ch. 4, pp. 58ff.,
TMR 8, pp. 200ff., 210ff., 224ff., 226ff., 329ff., 315Aff.

Chapter 138 SMR Ch. 4, pp.396-420, Barbs ...1 3, 15; Delusive Drift ... Ch. 3 -
cf. Ch. 134 above

Chapter 139 Spiritual Refreshings ...Ch. 13, Nothing Doing from Nothing

As in Part VIII, Ch. 98: Stepping Out for Christ Ch. 9

See also astronomy, above.

PART X

Grace, Foreknowledge, Predestination,
Love, Liberty, Goodness, Growth, Youth, Duty and Necessity

Chapter 140 The Marvels of Predestination and the Ways of Will Ch. 2,
Great Execrations ... Chs. 7, and 9,

Chapter 141 Christ Incomparable, Lord Indomitable Ch. 2,
Overflight in Christ, Ch. 2, esp. *1,

Chapter 142 Dizzy Dashes, Heady Clashes
and the Brilliant Harmony of Inevitable Truth Ch. 3,

As in Part VI, Ch. 32: Little Things ... Ch. 5,

As in Part III, Ch. 7 above: It Bubbles ... Ch. 9

Chapter 143 Anguish, Ecstasy and the Mastery of the Messiah Ch. 10;

News 51 - significantly extended
(the pangs and peace of youth, currently being spiritually seduced with devilish dynamic to soar into the abyss, confused and broken as it builds, yet provided with that same apt and awesome resolution to life which in engineering is seen in its physical construction, far surpassing the best works of man)

Chapter 144 Barbs... Appendix 2, SMR pp. 582ff. The Biblical Workman Appendix 2

Chapter 145 Repent or Perish Ch. 1, What is Life For ?

Chapter 146 Cascade ... Ch. 9, Red Heart Ch. 9, Christ, the Wisdom of God ... Ch. 8

Chapter 147 Joyful Jottings 28, SMR pp. 594-610,
The Biblical Workman Ch. 6,

Chapter 148 Stepping Out for Christ Ch. 10, Epilogue, Barbs ... 6
Questions and Answers Ch. 6

(147-148 - growth and progress assemblage)

Chapter 149 The True God has Go ... Ch. 4

As in Part VIII, Ch. 87: Scaling the Heights ... Ch. 5

Chapter 150 The Glow of Predestinative Power Ch. 10

RELIGION, RELIGIOSITY AND REALITY IN CHRIST

Published August, 2009

ISBN 978-0-9806 750-6-1

It has appeared to this author that the many religious perspective operations which have been presented on this site could well be modelled into a compilation, one of reasonable coverage, assisting those brain-washed into comparative religion approaches, synthetic insight scenarios and existential contentions to begin to breathe again.

So often it is assumed that the speaker, whoever it may be, without rational source, has the objective knowledge to enable a classification of all things, in the field of religion at the least, or the evaluation of all things, or to BE the basis, and this is made on the understanding that in discussing God, or gods, you first assume that there aren't any of these, that the class, category is null, vacant, or that you constitute the basis for all understanding, or your experience, gaspings or gapings. After all, if there were not any god or gods, you would have to be 'it', the centre and masterpiece to be able to dispose of all things by your knowledge, which would need not only to be absolute, but absolutely communicable.

There may be palliatives, analgesics, to the effect that people really thought this and that, or were driven to it by this and that, feeble rationales for irrationality, or were deluded; but underlying is this godlike perspective commonly assumed by those who deny gods, while taking their place with an ease which would be admirable were it not ridiculous. You either become god in order to tell us all about what is not there, or you act as god in order to marshall all things: that is the manner of the modelling. In either case, it is unbecoming, as well as untrue. We are born and die. Without God, we know nothing rightly; but then, we are not without God, and by Him are able to understand all things from Him (Proverbs 8:8, Romans 17ff.).

What however of those who do not actually claim godhood or its functional powers and merely articulate the view that it is all comparative, relative to genes, past, present, developments or any other oddity chosen ? If, however, all were comparative, where is the basis for evaluation of any ? Assumption ? Presumption ? arrogance of heart ? seizures of the head ?

If absolute truth were unavailable on a model of this kind, there being merely reactors, reactions and reagents, then in what manner is this disposition of things to be known! What is not there CANNOT be known. Since however, it is readily demonstrable both that it is and where it is (cf. SMR, TMR, and other major sets found in Search^*A), we escape - like a rocket propelled adequately to escape the tenacious gravity of the earth - from these conundrums. Pursuing logic remorselessly as in these volumes and their correlatives noted, we find a network of demonstration which moves to a finale in verification in the Bible, application of its data and confirmation; and this proceeds, while avoiding the anti-validation of a model antagonistic in the first place, to what it presumes to gain.

If reason were unreasonable, where would validity be in any knowledge ? It is however given as a gift, and like other gifts must be used to the uttermost, since it has been proven to be inestimable value in much. Declining to use it in any one field is mere arrogance and intemperance, allied to whimsical caprice or worse (cf. SMR pp. 150ff., 330ff.). It becomes a scientistic folly justly named "The Cult of the Forbidden." Contrary to scientific method, it is merely an export of an invalid philosophical assumption, simple begging of the question.

Using reason however as in any field without fear, and in this in particular, it becomes eloquent by results. Finding the necessity of God by it^*B, we find the testimony of God through it, like using a geiger counter to test for radiation. Having found what He has to say, and using reason to show it must have been said (cf. Psalm 50^*C), we verify by showing it has the calibre, or better the qualities which could in any case have come from no other source. When we also find that it resolves all questions of validity and truth in passing, while analysing and extraditing man as the source of his own pangs, pains and tragedies, declaring the prognosis of his diagnosed disease, and foretelling what is needed for understanding and convenience, the resolutions are complete.

Indeed, when further, we find the basis in the Bible for resolution of all psychic, social and political problems, and the call to come out of the problem-making kingdom into the kingdom of heaven, then the practicalities become as grand as the principles. When even more than this, we are told of the signals for the action of the Great Physician who is also the Judge, and that this is imminent, joy should know no limits (cf. I Peter 1).

There is an exception here. When this diagnosis-prognosis and resolution which applies on all sides is rejected by will, so that as Christ put it, light has come and darkness is preferred to it (John 3:19), then there is assuredly no cause for rejoicing. But this ? it is like a man who having a cancer which can be extirpated by operation, refuses it. If he is sad, that is his affair; he is merely being wilful. In this case, man is enabled not only to act as he will, but to will as he will, since in the providence and foreknowledge of God, he is in line to have a new nature which is aligned to God, and it is God who knows the truth and He is not dependent on pathological presumptions, as His love is applied (John 3:16, II Timothy 1:8ff., I Timothy 2:1ff., Colossians 1:19ff.).

With God, there are no limits such as unbelieving man weaves for himself, entangled like a foolish kitten, and in the Bible there are resolutions on all sides, and no wonder, since the return to reality as always, is the path to understanding.

As we survey the scene, then, from a biblical and logical standpoint (as seen in the above, these are correlatives, each requiring the other as we proceed in search of God and what are His wants), we find the lapses, errors, quaint oddities and vicious errors in this or that religion, and using the biblical explanation, find that all fits. In this, biblical instruction, principles and perspective become a course for instruction in religions and their ways. This is a particular focus of this present volume.

A major contribution is on Buddhism; while a number of analyses and applications cover the chief logical points needed re Islam for this purpose, as occurs likewise for secularistic or atheistic naturalism, with its oddities of exasperation and continual innovation, as can happen when sailors try to save any sinking ship, but failing, add their own squalls to those of the ocean^*D. This is seen in its nakedness, while the basic character of pseudo-Christian sects is similarly exhibited; and it is seen that these join with some major religions in a wider view of sects. Judaism, defined for this purpose as the Old Testament religion without the New, as inspired from God, but allowing some latitude on the nature of the commitment to the Old Testament within the definition, is given its own analysis, and with it Romanism which has some points in common with it.

The standpoint is not a mere investigation, but one governed by logical analysis and what this leads to in terms of perspective. The Bible being rationally required, it is used in this overview. In this way, all fits into place with eminent simplicity, and the oft-roted myth that religion is a mere contentious error for myths and word-smiths, is not only rebutted, but miserably dismissed (cf. Secular Myths and Sacred Truth).

Its exponents are shown to be not only in an unconscionable logical muddle, but to be met by an imperturbable logical clarity on the basis that life did not just breeze in, that highest power of mentality and conceptual mechanics known in the things visible on this earth, that matter did not simply decide to arise, and space-time did not protrude from nothingness with allowance made by something as some concession based likewise on nothing (cf. The gods of naturalism have no go!).

God has spoken into being, our DNA written codes and the Bible, both most evident and each practically testable, over the millenia. Nothing approaches in brilliance in the one language, or in testability and verifiability and validity in the field, the other. With God, it is not a question of whether or who He is; but of what man does about it.

Notes on the Above.

See:

DEITY AND DESIGN, DESIGNATION AND DESTINY, especially Section 8;

LIGHT DWELLS WITH THE LORD'S CHRIST

WHO ANSWERS RIDDLES

AND WHERE HE IS, DARKNESS DEPARTS

Bible or Blight, Christ or Confusion:
The Comprehensive Resolution of Man's Intractable Problems
is Found Only in the Bible, the Word of God;

The Meaning of Liberty and the Message of Remedy,

The gods of naturalism have no go!

SMR, TMR, in the latter esp. Chs. 1, 6-7, together with Ch. 5; and in the former, SMR, see Chs. 1-3,10. In the verification field see esp. Chs. 8-9, in comparison with Ch. 5 and 6. In the field of review, see esp. Ch. 10.

Jesus Christ, Defaced, Unfazed ... Ch. 4,

History, Review, Overview ... Ch. 5,

Ancient Words, Modern Events Ch. 9.

It is sad to see people try illicitly to reason that because reason can show that it necessarily is the case that God IS, this would limit His liberty and hence either be counter-productive or a contradiction.

This is exposed in TMR, but in brevity here, let us consider this wriggle. The model is this, and it must be seen as such for such a purpose of examination for consistency, since that is being here challenged. Let us then look at the biblical Christian 'model'.

Logic is in human format, a creation of God, as part of His creation of man. It is a dower of the LOGOS, expressive member of the Deity. It is of Him and from Him. It is freely made into a part of what He has created. He desired to do this and so did it. There is nothing contrary or limiting or forcing or controlling in this, any more than when a poet writes a poem; and less, since a poet has to be born first, but God is eternal, the Eternal Adequacy without whom there is nothing, which does not go anywhere, whereas we are somewhere.

Once you use this divine dower, given to man within the creation, in a survey, hypothesis-making mode, then you find that it infallibly leads to the Bible as shown in SMR, and this Holy Writ serves as a handbook given, together with the DNA control mode book, a very large and integral one, as one of two in operation. Neither is dispensable in this world, and the former is indispensable in all worlds, for its word is truth. When we who are His, see God face to face at last (I Corinthians 13:12), in the day when this world is finally gone, as when you see the man and no more merely the photograph, it will be surpassed, but not denied.

The Bible in turn, was freely created by God through His chosen means because, following man's fall, He wanted to give to mankind advice and opportunity. Accordingly, He directed words to him and in time, such a handbook (otherwise man would be in incredible problems following the misuse of his freedom as noted in Genesis 3, but now it is only those who ignore it who have the irresolvable).

REASON is given and REVELATION is given. So far we find. What then ?

The reason by virtue of the nature of creation and its application by man to whom it is given, finds that God is and that the Book of the Lord is; and that he tests, and finds it unique and impossible except from such a source, and that there is only one such testable book, in a model of validity.

What limits God in this, therefore ? How is such an idea reasonably gained ? He WANTS to make man, wants to give him logic, from Himself, and this in the sort of creation He has made leads inexorably to the One who made it, and the Book He gives leads clearly to what He wants man to do about his fall.

It is impossible to find any limitation of God in this. He does as the Bible states, what he wishes in heaven and in earth (Psalm 115); and again, Who will be His counsellor ? (Isaiah 40). What He wishes and why is another question, which has its own answer from His word, this same Bible. As He says, He has not spoken in secret (Isaiah 45:19).

Thus we come to a question, as originally posed: Does the fact that reason leads infallibly to God and to His word constitute a limit on God ? Necessarily not so, since it is a means given by God for a purpose given by God, in terms of truth. He has done what He pleases, and it pleased Him that man should find Him, and so He has provided many means to this end, one being reason.

This fulfils and does not limit the mind of God. It DOES however limit man; but then he is limited anyway, by construction, and this is a resolution for him, as limited things when they forget themselves have a tendency to find trouble. When, indeed, it is God they also forget, then they need a revelation as radical and as refined as what we have to deliver from deserved disaster. God has elected to give this rather than simply scrap man. God has done what He pleases and this to, it shows who He is. It is a good pleasure (Ephesians 1:9).

Barbs ... 6 -7, Sparkling Life .... Ch. 4, The Glow of Predestinative Power Ch. 7, Little Angel Ch. 11, as marked.

The tempestuous force of this beautiful oceanic gift from God shows both the power and the peace, the majesty and the challenge, the opportunity and the need for understanding, that in man must find its life in the God who made it. This is not in the elements that have their multiplied laws found by the intellect of man, first inserted by the Legislator, who makes things fashioned by such limitations, and founded in such order and organisation, so formulable in retrospect, by man. Mankind accordngly and predictably, indeed it is predicted in the Bible, founders without seeking and finding the One who wrote not only in DNA, His multiplied information and commands, that require mind and the activity of intelligence, but in the heart of man a capacity to be fulfilled or denuded.

In that heart of man what is found ? a ruthless, a despondent, a questing, a capitulatory, a strident, a humble, an overbearing, a forbearing opportunity and liability, which finds its meaning only where it came from, and its life only in the hand of the One who made it able to relate to Himself, attesting this as surely in Christ and the Bible as in the DNA.

Information never comes from nowhere (The Desire of the Nations Ch. 2EPI, Little Things Ch. 3 (esp. *3), The Beauty of Holiness Ch. 4, Dancers ... and Answers ... Chs. 3, 5, Jesus Christ, Defaced, Unfazed ... Ch. 4), being organised, conceptually coded, linguistically organised, mentally meaningful, communicatively apt, a segment of intellect's productions and a salient promontory of survey.

Let all then be informed: as to the human race, it was made in beauty, it is fallen into the depths. It needs regeneration (John 3). The case has been met; the call must also be met. Neither indolence nor forgetfulness will do. Dithering does not perform. Distancing does not remove. It is well that it is so, because in the love of God, perseverance is a holy beauty - HIS!